Three Kisses (Novelinee) Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for my wife Daleen)

Your first soft kiss was on my fingertips,
as to sanctify the words that I write
leaving the two red impressions of your lips
and for many more I had an appetite
while the second kiss only brushed light,
as a butterfly fluttered away
in its fragile kind of lingering flight;
full on my lips the third kiss did not stray
and you became my true love on that day.

[Reference: "Three kisses" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.]